


Waiting

by micehell



Category: Velvet Goldmine
Genre: Angst, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-25
Updated: 2007-04-25
Packaged: 2017-11-12 00:16:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/micehell/pseuds/micehell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The next time Curt sees him, he's Brian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting

Brian hems and haws around what he wants, making small talk that's almost like a mugging, his opinions clever and charming, but Brian wields them like a club, smashing them over the head of his audience, moving on to the next one before they're finished reeling from the last. It's familiar, so Brian, and Curt can't help but find it endearing, though he could wish he didn't.

Eventually the mugging gives way to something more subtle, a proposition, Brian's hips canting, eyes hooding, all the tell-tales that means he wants something, and he wants it badly. Curt could almost laugh when he realizes that it's him. He's waited years for this, dreamed of it even when he knew he shouldn't, but he doesn't know what to do now. Timing has never been one of Brian's talents.

The blatant appeal gives way to something realer, sadder, and where the incubus with Brian's face had almost made him laugh, this makes Curt want to cry. Brian talks for a long time, the coffee he'd ordered long cold, and it's like a litany of failures -- Cecil, Mandy, Curt, Tommy Stone -- and Brian's almost humble, which is somewhat frightening, when he says how much he's missed Curt. Says he feels he let the most important thing in his life slip away when he let Curt leave without saying a word.

Curt loves Brian; he thinks he always will. No one has ever brought him to the heights this man could. Few ever brought him to such depths, either, but that's part of passion, the lows with the highs. And Curt's been waiting for Brian to admit he was wrong, to regret the way they left things. He's been waiting for Brian to give him a second chance, waiting years to give Brian one. Waiting, hoping, even when things were at their worst, willing to give anything -- his money, his left nut, his fucking soul -- to have Brian say the words he's just said.

But it doesn't matter, and that's the saddest thing. Because while he was waiting, he found something else, and while he might miss the highs Brian raised in him, he doesn't miss the lows. It's been a year since he last saw Brian, up on the stage with someone else's face, but Curt isn't mired in the past that had drove him to that concert anymore.

He wonders at that for a moment, that freedom he's finally allowed himself. Because there were times -- in London, in Berlin, even here in New York -- when Curt was just waiting for a chance to hurt Brian, to get a little of his own back. He has it now, the upper hand; he can be angry and vicious, _justified_. It would be nothing more than Brian deserves. But Curt still loves him -- enough, just enough -- and Curt doesn't want to hurt anymore, Brian or himself.

It's awkward, the hug, the answer that Brian doesn't want to hear. There are tears in his eyes, in Curt's, when they say goodbye, when Curt lets go. And he's sorry, truly sorry, but while he was waiting for Brian, but he found Arthur instead.

He heads home, and when Arthur asks him what he did that day, he just answers with a kiss. Lets it wash away the last remnants of Brian, until all he can taste is Arthur, here and now.

Later, welcome weight holding him anchored to the present, he finds his veins filled with a passion that doesn't burn as brightly as the one before, but burns far more steadily, secure. Curt realizes that he's spent his entire life waiting -- for his father to stop, for his mother to start, for his brother to not, for Brian to -- but Arthur's above him, his lips tasting what they can in between gasps and whispers of Curt's name -- always, always sounding surprised, pleased, amazed -- and then Arthur's sinking deep, and Curt doesn't have to wait anymore.

/story  



End file.
